sayings and quotes

Chocolate is like medicine - but as with medicine, the key is the proper dose. Don't overdo it. ~Edward "Grandpa" Jones



Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed. ~William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, 1693



When you have done your best for a flower, and it fails, you have some reason to be aggrieved. ~Frank Swinnerton



God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress. ~Robert South, Sermons God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide. ~Rebecca West



Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com



Technology presumes there's just one right way to do things and there never is. ~Robert M. Pirsig



One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark, its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time, one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase - some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse - into the dustbin where it belongs. ~George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," Shooting an Elephant, 1950



Those who believe money can do everything are frequently prepared to do everything for money. ~Author Unknown



Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field? ~Jim Bouton, 1988



The conflict of forces and the struggle of opposing wills are of the essence of our universe and alone hold it together. ~Havelock Ellis



Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant; and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy. ~Mark Twain



Cockfighting was illegal in Oklahoma until 1963, when a judge ruled that chickens are not animals and therefore unprotected by anticruelty laws. ~U.S. News & World Report, 6 December 1999



Injury, when it is slight, upsets me; when it is strong it calms me. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin



As the poet said, "only God can make a tree" - probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. ~Woody Allen



Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships. ~Charles Simic



Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day. ~Author Unknown



It is our job to make women unhappy with what they have. ~B. Earl Puckett, quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library: Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992



Age is like the newest version of a software - it has a bunch of great new features but you lost all the cool features the original version had. ~Carrie Latet



I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well. ~Alexander the Great



Blood is that fragile scarlet tree we carry within us. ~Osbert Sitwell